Take Five
by big red balloon
Summary: Sakura falls in love, reluctantly.


I posted this a while ago after attending a dear childhood friend's wedding. (In fact, I think I even have the same author's notes!) I'd be lying out of my ass if I said it didn't make me feel like a hopeless romantic, and then I took this down because I was embarrassed by how cheesy it is. I have to admit though, the embarrassingly cheesy feelings of then have yet to leave me. And while this somehow reads angsty, I should warn you: my teeth sure did rot.

**Take Five  
**Wait, wait, just wait!

…

Sakura waits for three years.

In three years, Naruto's promise remains unfulfilled, Sasuke becomes a memory, and Sakura lets go of her youth. The memory of what they once were is still strong, celebrated in a small black frame she places at her bedside. She has seen the same sit by Naruto's bedside too, face turned openly towards where he sleeps.

She wonders if he too stares at it when he lies there, remembering times past. A part of her wants to confess, to admit to betrayal, because when she does the same, she only wonders if maybe she is happy Sasuke left. She hates herself for it but the idea of Naruto hating her scares her more.

Naruto is ugly – brash, stupid, compulsive. He is exactly the type of man a girl would never fall for, Hinata not withstanding. She convinces herself of this by convincing herself Sasuke is everything she wants. At twelve, Sakura already knows this, but, only twelve, Sakura herself is too stupid to realize she is wrong.

In a team of four, Sakura is somehow the useless third wheel.

With Kakashi at the head, and Naruto and Sasuke in a world of their own, she does not belong in Team Seven. She wonders if it isn't a matter of belonging but of space. She has no room in her eyes for Naruto but neither does the team have room for her.

Sakura is envious of – strength, character, maturity – things she will never have. She is envious because she is weak and weak-willed. _Kunoichi_ are not strong, cannot overcome their adversities, are nothing next to their male counterparts.

She is envious because she knows all this is untrue. It is not her as a ninja that will be weak, but her as herself. She has nothing to prove, no means to prove it, and no one to impress once she finally does.

Sakura doesn't remember the where or the when, but she remembers the why behind her first strike against another human being. Her parents don't question her decision to enter the Academy, neither dissenting nor supporting. Sakura has always been smart, so they trust her judgment.

She will prove it all, prove something, but it isn't until she is fifteen that Sasuke, who, at twelve, is a goal, an ideal to achieve, instead becomes one to surpass.

She never has the time to accept the true magnitude of her weakness before her character and resolve are tested, repeatedly, unforgivingly.

Tsunade is fearsome.

Sakura thinks she understands it, understands Sasuke, perhaps even begins to want to understand Naruto. But Sakura does not understand loss, having lost nothing; she does not understand loneliness, as she has never been alone; she does not understand weakness, because she has never been strong.

Sakura understands nothing – she has never needed to.

Tsunade is fearsome, Naruto is gone, Sasuke is lost, and Sakura's resolve has never been stronger.

She has long since split from the adolescence that shaped – warped – her impressions of the world. Still, she can't help but let his name slip, permanently fixed with affection, from her lips when she sees him.

Physically, time has been more than generous with Sasuke, allowing his cheekbones to define, his muscles to solidify, his stature reinforced with the knowledge of his strength. His body slowly grows into the man he will become. Sakura needs not even the simplest of imaginations to know exactly the type of man that will be. All she needs is time, confirmation of her already affirmed beliefs.

Mentally, however, Sakura cannot say the same. Sasuke has changed little, but what little has changed is for the worse.

Sasuke has always been a goal. From the very start, he has been her ideal.

With nothing but a cold gaze at her admission, she wonders where her ideal has gone, questions its existence, its mortality. Sakura is fifteen when she realizes even ideals lack perfection, because she is fifteen when she realizes Sasuke is perhaps the most tragically flawed in their team of tragically flawed individuals.

Naruto is ugly.

He is brash, compulsive, compassionate, surprisingly insightful. Too late, Sakura finally discovers this. Too late, she finally realizes her wisdom runs only so far as her understanding.

Some girls never learn to stop looking. Sakura discovers this only when she is fifteen (because she is fifteen when she realizes she has not been searching for a while). The discovery is not unwanted, nor is it, she further realizes, all that surprising. More truthfully, then, it is not a discovery so much as it is acceptance of an old fact.

Sakura pities those girls because she can: she is no longer one of them.

"Naruto."

Naruto turns, hand sweeping his bangs from his eyes in an unconsciously dramatic manner and Sakura laughs quietly to herself at the picturesque scene it creates; in the doorway, haloed by the sun, he looks larger than life. He is a far cry from the Prince Charming she dreamed of when she was younger.

She walks up to him and pushes him lightly out of the way in order to step through. When he doesn't follow, she turns back to see the confused look on his face. Sakura only smiles.

"I'll go with you."

Sasuke is an ideal, but reality is better, even a reality in which nothing is hers.


End file.
